Hello IANA webmaster,
Firstly congratulations are in order for the new IANA media type
pages, they are much clearer, and it is good to have a single URI
for each media type.
However I do have some comments.
For each type, there is a page of subtypes that seems to have three
columns. The first column is the subtype, and mostly links to the
registration document (some do not link to anything). The second
column, often blank, is the full name of the format. The third
column is confusing - it is either a link to the RFC that defines
the type (in such a case, the first column does not link to
anything) OR an indirect link to the email address of the person
that sent in the registration documents.
I believe this is confusing. Imagine headings for each column (which
there should be, for accessibility reasons) what would the columns
be called?
Also, where can one consistently get the specification for
each of these formats?
For example, image/png refers to the then current but highly
unstable draft-boutell-png-spec-04.txt whereas the defining document
is currently http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-png.html
As an example, for the image type
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/image/
there is the image/cgm type, which links to
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/image/cgm
which is the registration document for the image/cgm media type.
Then in the second column there is the full title, Computer Graphics
Metafile, and finally in the third column the text 'Francis' which
links to http://www.iana.org/assignments/contact-people.htm#Francis
which in turn has the name, email address and date of registration.
However, image/tiff has no link, says "Tag Image File Format" and in
the third column says "[RFC3302]" with a link to that RFC, which is
the image/tiff MIME Sub-type Registration.
In other words, the table organisation is different depending on
whether the registration was by email, or by RFC.
The proposed new registration procedures in
draft-freed-mime-p4-00.txt
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-freed-mime-p4-00.txt would
allow registration in the 'standards tree' (previously the IETF
tree) with notification by email the IETF-recognised standards body.
So if the intent was to distinguish 'IETF' from 'nonstandard'
registrations, that distinction will shortly become more subtle.
Actually it was already, because image/cgm for example was
registered by Francis as an action item from ISO/IETF JTC1 SC24 who
developed the CGM international standard.
I suggest the following changes
a) The first column should be the subtype string, as now, and should
always link to
http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/typename/subtypename
The TAG is discussing this
http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/ilist#uriMediaType-9http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/2002/01-uriMediaType-9
and in this regard it is very encouraging to see that both top level
types and media types have unique URIs. I would like that to be
extended to all media types, not just most of them.
The contents of the linked-to resource might be an archived
registration email, as now, or an archived registration notification
from another standards organisation, or a short file that says 'this
subtype was registered in RFC wxyz' with the RFC wxyz being a link
to that RFC.
The heading for that column might be 'subtype'.
b) The second column should contain, as now, the name of the format,
which is or should be provided for all types. (Ned - An additional
field in the registration form that explicitly asks for this string,
for documentation purposes, would be great).
As an example, the name for image/png is 'Portable Network
Graphics'; the name for text/css is 'Cascading Style Sheets'; the
name for model/vrml is 'Virtual Reality Modelling Language'.
I suggest that this string should also be a link, and should point
to the published specification of the format. This information is
available for all registrations in the 'Published specification'
part of the template.
(If the registration was in HTML or another structured format that
allowed fragment identifiers, then in the case of a non-online
published specification this could link to that part of the
registration form.) Lacking that, perhaps just linking to the whole
archived registration document would be sufficient and people can
search for the 'Published Specification' part. Or, if people have
used the form at
http://www.iana.org/cgi-bin/mediatypes.pl
the handler for that for could generate a short text or html
document containing the "Published specification" part.
This would also, incidentally, encourage the use of online, publicly
available specifications.
The heading for that column might be 'specification'.
c) The third column, which does not seem super necessary and could
be omitted, would be a link to the person that registered that type
or wrote the rfc that registered it or wrote the email that
registered it or whatever. I don't see a lot of use for this,
really.
The heading for that column might be 'registered by'. Currently,
that column is sometimes 'registered by' and sometimes 'defining
RFC'.
My main concern here is consistency, regularity and ease of
navigation.
If I can help, by providing the format names for example for formats
that W3C has registered or references, please let me know.
--
Chris mailto:chris@w3.org